<p>The problem of distributed leader election in an asynchronous complete network, in the presence of faults that occurred prior to the execution of the election algorithm, is discussed. Failures of this type are encountered, for example, during a recovery from a crash in the network. For a network with n processors, k of which start the algorithm that uses at most O(n log k+n+kt) messages is presented and shown to be optimal. An optimal algorithm for the case where the identities of the neighbors are known is also presented. It is noted that the order of the message complexity of a t-resilient algorithm is not always higher than that of a nonresilient one. The t-resilient algorithm is a systematic modification of an existing algorithm for a fault-free network.</p>